this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world, i'm fareed zakaria. the debates are done, the race is heading for the final stretch, and it is still all about the economy. so we'll start with a great panel to talk about the american economy. what is actually going on. then, you've often heard that fracking is controversial. why? we have a debate to help you think it through. and do you think you have enough money? what would be enough? we'll have a fascinating discussion on the subject with lord robert skidelsky, britain's most prominent economic historian on how to answer those questions. and why in the world did the

nation of mali get more mention this week in the foreign policy debate than all of japan, mexico, or europe? first, my take. the international monetary fund's latest world economic outlook makes for gloomy reading. growth projections have been revised downward almost everywhere, especially in europe and the big emerging markets like china. yet when looking out over the next four years, coincidentally the next presidential term, the imf projects that the united states will be the strongest of the world's rich economies. u.s. growth is forecast to average 3%, much stronger than that was germany or france, at 1.2%, or even canada at 2.3%. increasingly the evidence suggests that the united states has come out of the financial crisis of 2008 in better shape than its peers because of the actions of its government. perhaps the most important cause

of america's relative health is the federal reserve. ben bernanke understood the depths of the problem early and responded energetically and creatively. the clearest vindication of his actions has been that the european central bank after charting an opposite course for three years with disastrous results, has now adopted policies similar to the fed's, and thus avoided a potential lehman-like collapse in europe. the leading experts on financial crises argue that the united states is performing better than most countries in similar circumstances in history. consumers are paying down debt, and consumer confidence is at its highest levels since september, 2007. every american recovery since world war ii has been led by housing except this one. but finally, housing is back. two weeks ago, jamie dimon, chief executive of jpmorgan

chase, declared that housing had turned the corner and predicted that as a consequence, economic growth in 2013 would be so strong that the fed would have to raise interest rates. corporate profits are at an all-time high as a percentage of gross domestic product, and companies have $1.7 trillion in cash on their balance sheets. american exports which have climbed 45% in the past four years, are at the highest level ever as a percent of gdp. the key to long-term recoveries from recessions is reform and restructuring, and u.s. businesses have been quick to respond. government intervention, believe it or not, has assisted this process with banks, with auto companies, and even in housing. banks had to undergo stress tests and raise capital, "the economist" magazine which initially opposed the auto bailout reversed itself because of the manner in which general motors and chrysler were forced by the government to cut costs and become competitive.

now all these good signs in the economy come with caveats. europe continues to weaken. the fiscal cliff looms ominously. but compared with the rest of the industrialized world and with the arc of other post-bubble recoveries, the united states is ready for a robust revival. this is partly because of the dynamism of the u.s. economy but also because of the timely and intelligent actions of the fed and the obama administration. the next president will reap the rewards of work already done. so it would be the ultimate irony if having strongly criticized every measure that contributed to these positive trends mitt romney ends up presiding over what she would surely call the romney recovery. for more on this, go to cnn/fareed for a link to my "washington post" column. and let's get started. ♪

let's get straight to our terrific panel to talk about the economy and obviously a little politics, as well. joe klein is "time's" political economist. amity shlaes is director for the 4% project at the george w. bush institute and author of the forthcoming "coolidge: a biography of america's 30th president." ken rogoff, whom i mentioned, is a professor of economics at harvard university, and chrystia freeland is the editor of thompson reuters digital and author of "plutocrats." become back to both of you. ken, the piece i mentioned, you and carmen rinehart wrote almost a political piece about how the u.s. was doing. you said, look, compared with other big financial crises that meet the recessions, we're doing pretty well. fair?

>> yeah. that's a fair characterization of what they said and what we said. i mean, it's fair game to say we can do better. we have a plan where the economy's going to grow better. but it you're going to evaluate what happened, was it a bad recovery, was it a good recovery, i think you have to compare it to deep financial crisis. this was not a plain vanilla recession. you have to compare it to deep financial crises we've had in this country which don't happen very often and other countries around the world, and if you go by that metric, the united states has not done so badly. i mean, i think part of the argument is they say, well, we're not growing that fast now. but the other side of the coin is we didn't fall that far at the beginning. i mean, what people are interested in is are we better off than we were four years ago. and not did we get a lot better in the last year, having sunk mightily.

so i think that was sort of what the debate was about. carmen rinehart nor i have been backing either of the candidates, nor advising them, but we felt since our work was being cited again and again and again, not just in op-eds but in press briefings that we heard from, we thought we had to set the record straight. >> fair to say we're doing pretty well compared to other countries in similar positions? >> well, we're better than the worst. is that good enough? that would be the question. what's interesting about what ken is saying is deep financial crisis, yes. it is part of a great pattern that he and carmen have analyzed and highlighted. however, our deep financial crisis, it sounds a little exonerating, doesn't it? deep financial crisis. nothing the average person could do about it. it has to do with political policy. for example, vis-a-vis housing. if our federal government hadn't guaranteed all housing everywhere both through fannie mae and freddie mac, the fha and so on, we would have had less of a crisis. the whole world believed in our housing. so i disagree just with the exonerating tone, this of the result of policy that voters

supported that was erroneous. it wasn't negative -- >> but a lot of it happened earlier. >> yeah, but -- no, no. it wasn't inevitable like weather. when you talk about financial cycles as ken says, oh, that's the weather, we can't do -- this was the result of policy by both parties. >> sure, that's absolutely true. but it's not -- it is policy by both parties. so republicans, of course, like to talk about the housing which democrats were very supportive of -- wrongly, i believe. but democrats like to talk about, and they should talk about bank regulation. you know, if you want to talk about regulatory failure, if you want to talk about government failure, surely the deregulation of the financial sector up to 2008 is one of the great failures. >> let me ask you a question about the politics of this. will voters really understand the ken rogoff argument, that this is a deep financial crisis causes overleveraged consumers and balance sheets get out of whack and it takes a while before this straightens out?

they're looking and saying obama's been president for three years and hasn't fixed anything? >> i think that's right. but i think that they might understand it if it were bill clinton explaining it to them. i think that -- that obama really has been awful at explaining his policies and explaining the state of the economy for the last three or four years. >> i'd like to say again policies do matter deeply. example, for the viewer, next year it's predicted we'll go into recession again if the fiscal cliff is not addressed. and we do go over it. these are decisions that have to be made by lawmakers before christmas time or the new year in regard to tax and sequester and spending. it's there in the books, and it's probably accurate. i think we let ourselves off the hook when we compare ourselves to europe. it's not so great just to be less bad than the others which is where we are. >> i want to first talk about the fiscal cliff. is it going to happen? >> no, it's not. i've been doing this for 43

years, and i suppose i should be a cynic by now, but i'm not. i'm very optimistic that this is going to be handled because a good part of the blockage was the fact that mitch mcconnell set as his goal the fact that obama wouldn't be re-elected. now if obama gets re-elected, that has passed. and john boehner will have to think about his feature as speaker. if he wants to stand with the tea party or stand with the vast moderate majority of people in this country who believe that there have to be some revenues, and there have to be some cuts, and there have to be entitlement reforms. there's a rational, sane middle road out there. if romney wins, then he will have to deal with the democrats in the senate which he will want to do, and he will have to say to his right wing as he has implicitly over the last three or four weeks that no, guys, we're not going to have this extreme policy. and as for tax rates mattered, i mean, i think we all live through the great depression of

the 1990s after bill clinton raised taxes. and the great depression of the 1980s after ronald reagan raised taxes, especially on business, three times. >> we're going to have to see stop -- no, we're going to have stop, take a break. when we come back, we'll talk inevitably about all this, but also going forward what's going to get this economy moving again. [ male announcer ] citi turns 200 this year. in that time there've been some good days. and some difficult ones. but, through it all, we've persevered, supporting some of the biggest ideas in modern history. so why should our anniversary matter to you? because for 200 years, we've been helping ideas move from ambition to achievement. and the next great idea could be yours.

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so i brought it to mike at meineke. we gave her car a free road handling check. i like free. free is good. my money. my choice. my meineke. we are back with joe klein, amity shlaes, ken rogoff, and chrystia freeland. term two for whoever it is, term

two for obama, term one for romney, what do you think would get america growing at 3% or more? >> well, let me pick up on what joe has said and tell you what is the truth that dares not speak its name on wall street right now. and behind actually i think a lot of the wall street support for romney. i think a lot of people on wall street are hoping and actually believe that if romney were elected, he would discover his inner dick cheney. and that the way -- >> that's a frightening thought. >> right? no, no, the way the fiscal cliff would get resolve sudden that romney would say yes to tax cuts and would say actually deficits don't matter right now. let's make growth a priority. and because it was a republican president that, therefore, you would have the congress much more willing to go along. wall street at this moment would see that as a positive scenario, stimulus by stealth. >> what i worry about is that neither candidate if they win is

going to get to execute their vision, that they're going to be having -- like you marry someone but there are a lot of unruly relatives you never quite realized were there. coming out of the woodwork. and i worry -- i actually think both men acquitted themselves quite well in the debates. but the point is, they're in this larger environment, what is going to go on. i worry we're going to see muddling through instead of clear-cut tax reform, clear cut infrastructure program, clear cut ways to improve education. >> joe, i remember a couple of years ago -- >> i do it every year. >> but a series of wonderful articles, before the midterm for "time" magazine. you talked over a lot of the midwest, middle class. and you found that the -- china came up ten times as often as afghanistan -- >> 20. >> 20 types as often as afghanistan. when you look at the -- what an average middle-class american family is facing, particularly kind of people who work in factories, they're up against

probably a generation of this kind of wage competition and -- possibly wage deflation because of china, things. do you -- what do you think happens to the politics of america if that middle class is not appreciably better five, six, eight years from now? >> well, we're heading toward, i think, a demographic period of real difficulty as the white majority declines. and there's -- and there's a fear of -- out in the middle of the country of this new america that's emerging that is so multicultural, multiethnic. but i do think -- once again, i'm going to be slightly optimistic here because, you know, you and i have written about this. we're finally beginning to understand what hasn't worked in education. the idea that college is appropriate for everyone hasn't worked. there is a major movement on in

the country to match people skills with the jobs that are out there. vocational education's making a big comeback. and i think that even as manufacturing jobs begin to return because our energy costs are going to be lower and labor costs are rising in asia, i think that those are going to be skilled manufacturing jobs. and we're on the brink now where we can figure -- we're beginning to figure out how to re-jigger our education to meet the economy of the future. >> i'm sadly going to be a little more pessimistic than you, joe. and i think, fareed, you have asked the most important question. i am less worried about structural unemployment, but i am worried about economic lousy jobs. there's a paper about the lousy economic jobs. i think we're entering the period of structural lousy jobs. they can be manufacturing jobs, but they're not paying the same

that they paid -- forget the 1950s, they're not paying what they were paying 10 or 15 years ago. i think we are entering a period, precisely as you say, because of this global labor market where this is going to be a big chunk of the middle class that are the working poor. they're going to have jobs, jobs that we consider to be good jobs. they will have had the vocational training, but they will not be making enough money to feel good, to feel comfortable. and what that does to the politics, i think you already see. i think it makes the politics much nastier, much more dicier. there's much less room for compromise. i think it's a frightening prospect. >> amity, no matter who's elected, at some point we'll have to deal with entitlement spending. do you think there is the political will on either side to actually cut spending? particularly entitlements -- >> i do. if we sat here over one afternoon, we could come up with a social security compromise

that reflected the impulses of all political parties. sometimes i think we blow up especially social security, we make it seem harder than it is. it's not that hard -- >> so the -- >> so -- >> it's economically easy but politically -- >> right. so it's our job to convey to the viewer that it's economically easy to fix social security. and if a politician tells you otherwise, from either side, that it must all be privatized or cannot be touched because it's a democratic holy cow, they're exaggerating. so one is to view that as not insurmountable, the health care is much more complex. but i want to mention that we all -- we're talking in this narrow bed, concerned about michigan, notwithstanding or because of auto bailout is what, over 7%, more like nine in the midwest in the future there. just to widen our band, i'd like to offer what would happen, dr. rogoff, ken, whom i admire so much, if we cut the capital gains tax to 2% in the united

states, would we fall off a cliff of deficit or would we fall off the cliff of deficit as you described? >> i think the answer is if we had a tax simplification where that was taken off the table is the best idea, it's outrageous that a lot of things get disguised as capital gains that are really income creating the biggest inequality -- >> you say raise capital gains, for example, hedge funds? >> if we didn't change anything else, absolutely. that is criminal. >> one point of agreement. joe klein, ken rogoff, amity shlaes, chrystia freeland, thanks for joining us. up next, "what in the world." why a little-known nation, mali, is more important than europe, mexico, and india combined. at least according to this week's presidential debate. i'll explain. this is america.

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now for our "what in the world" segment. in the final presidential debate, the one on foreign

policy, it was interesting to note the countries that got a mention. iran was cited 47 times, of course. israel, 34 times. and china, 32 times. it was also telling, there was only one mention each of europe and africa, and none at all of india. but i was struck by the amount of play one small country got. the one doesn't usually register on washington's foreign policy radar. >> mali -- >> mali -- >> with a gdp 1% of mexico. why mali? here's the story briefly. radical islamist groups have taken control of as much as 2/3 of mali's territory, including the historic city of timbuktu. among these groups is al qaeda and the islamic maghreb, said to have been involved in last month's attack on the consulate

in benghazi, libya. together the radical outfits have tormented mali. they've destroyed shrines, imposed sharia law and stoned people who come in their wake. now, mali was once considered one of the few stable democracies in africa, and mali's capital would normally have been able to counteract these insurgents. but the government tripped up this year. a coup took place in march. in the aftermath, soldiers deserted the army. there are reports many even sold their equipment for money. so mali is essentially defenseless. last month the interim president called on the u.n. security council to help. seems increasingly likely there will be some military intervention. already a regional group called ecowas, economic community of west african states, is pulling together a small army. france is leading the calls for action. it has submitted a proposal to

the u.n. for malayan soldier to be trained by the european union. those soldiers will then join a few thousand ecowas troops to retake northern mali. remember, mali was a french colony until 1960. france continues to have trade interests in the region. what about washington's role? haven't our leaders promised to go after al qaeda wherever it takes us? yes, but that doesn't always mean we need to have boots on the ground. al qaeda and affiliated groups keep popping up in different parts of the world. when we suppress them this one region, they pop up elsewhere, it is a tremendous undertaking to keep following them especially with troops. that's why it's heartening to see local and regional powers take up the fight. in somalia, for example, ethiopia and kenya have been instrumental in battling the al qaeda-linked shabab group. others have welcomed surgical u.s. strikes, even drone strikes, without the presence of u.s. troops. with or without the united

states, there is a real prospect that the next war you will hear about, perhaps next year, will be fought not in iran but in the impoverished country of mali. you heard it here first. up next, the human quest for success and money. we're all familiar with it, but how much is enough? when do you stop? we'll tell you the answer. when we come back. [ russian accent ] rubles. eh, eheh, eh, eh. [ brooklyn accent ] 50% more simoleons. [ western accent ] 50% more sawbucks. ♪ [ maine accent ] 50% more clams. it's a lobster, either way. [ male announcer ] the capital one cash rewards card. with a 50% annual cash bonus, it's the card for people who like more cash. [ italian accent ] 50% more dough! what's in your wallet?

how much is enough? is anything ever enough? it sounds like a philosophical question, but it's also one about economics. so here's one way to approach answering it. a father and son write a book. the father is a famous economic historian. the son is a lecturer in philosophy. i welcome robert and edward skidelsky, authors of "how much is enough?" what i'm struck by, robert, in this book is it -- it's familiar. in the 19th century, there used to be many conservatives who would argue against industrialization because the feeling was this was just turning into kind of materialism, and everybody wants more, more, more, and then your great man canes wrote a piece in the '30s saying we're producing so much wealth that at some point everyone will have enough stuff. and they can all work for a few

hours a day and, you know, enjoy the rest of the day. marx used to argue that as well in his own way. hasn't worked out quite that way for whatever reason as a predictor of how human beings will behave, we do seem to want more, more, more, more. >> we do. i think canes would add to that moral victorian tradition in which money was regarded as a means to something, a good life. and he was the last really of economists, last generation of economists who thought in these terms and thought of economics as a moral science. and that you needed to ask always the question enough for what, what is money for? otherwise you are adrift. you just go on accumulating without end, without purpose. so he said enough for a good life. and he thought that technology was bringing that about. that it was actually producing such increases in wealth that we

would be able to have abundance with a fraction of the work. that people would then do it. but that bit of it hasn't come about. >> why? >> i think a number of explanations. one is that our society's become much more unequal than it was when canes was writing. the other is i think he underestimated the force of insatiability. the relative character -- >> you end up with new needs and new wants. if you have one car, you feel like maybe it will be even more fun to have three. in the book it seems to me -- correct me if i'm wrong -- briefly what you're saying is you need enough for a good what we would consider good or upper middle class in terms of material comforts, house, things like that. beyond that, the kind of constant accumulation of more stuff doesn't give you a good life. what gives you a good life is time spent with your family, building relationships, pursuing activities that you find

interesting. >> yeah. well, we break it down into seven basic goods, as we call that. these are the goods that together make up a good life, health, respect, security, personality, harmony with nature, friendship, and leisure. so once you have enough money to enjoy these goods and once society has enough money to enjoy these goods collectively, then you have a good life. >> it's insane to go on and on and on. >> and there's a tradeoff because in order to get more and more money, you have to sacrifice. you don't have the time for these friendships. you don't have the time for leisure. you don't have, you know, the ability to pursue that good life. >> in economic terms, they all have opportunity costs. leisure has an opportunities cost because it means when you're enjoying leisure, you're forgoing the extra income that you could be getting when you're working. and if you're rational, you

balance these things. that's an insane way of doing it. when you're poor, of course you need to work in order to get enough. when you're already rich, do this kind of calculation, and say, well, if i go to the theater, i'll -- i'll not make an extra $100 that i would get by staying at my desk. i mean, when you're already rich, that seems to me an insane calculation. >> how do you determine, the problem in america, nobody thinks they're rich, they're all trying to get richer. >> that's because they think they're not as rich as other people, and also -- >> is there an objective standard you could -- >> well, i think the other thing that americans worry about, indeed many europeans, is there's been a big increase in insecurity. they may have wealth, but how long will it last? what about their retirement? what about the cuts in services? what about their jobs? they may lose them. so there's this insecurity. and one of our basic goods is security. we believe there was more

security, actually, in the '50s and '60s, certainly in terms of jobs, than there is today. >> the one thing that seems clear is that the research on happiness, if one can describe this as serious research, but there are lots of studies that say that what makes people happy once they have achieved some kind of middle-class status, is human relationships, ties to their families, leisure pursuits, civic activities. it's not the third car. >> but these are the things that don't get into gross domestic product statistics which are entirely about the goods that enter the market and exchange in the market. all the other things that give people the feeling that they're leading a good life and contents them. they're sort of ignored. so the pursuit of growth as such is a highly misleading objective because it just concentrates on a narrow segment of goods, and

you always really want to ask what is growth for, growth of what? growth of what? if you say growth of pollution, that is absolutely rubbish. that's not something you ought to be thinking about. but growth of friendship, how do you get it into gdp? the king of bhutan, of course, he suggests substituting gross domestic happiness as the goal of his people. well, i can see why in a way. because if there are lots of people are very, very poor, and you can persuade them that they're happy, then he can keep up his palaces going, and people won't get discontented about it. so it's a bit of a -- a bit of a poisoned chalice that notion of happiness. unless you're very careful you get into a brave new world situation where rumors make people happy by giving psychic aspirin or something like that,

and then they feel idiotically happy the whole time. >> skidelsky, thank you very much for joining me. up next, shale gas has revolutionized america's economy, but is it safe? we'll have a debate on the pros and cons coming up. what if there was a new way to deal with money that focused less on fees and more... on what matters? maybe your bank account is taking too much time

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america's extraordinary natural gas boom has been made possible by an extraction method called fracking. that's the controversial process developed with the help of the u.s. government of shooting millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand down a well. when the water hits the shale rock, the rock that contains the natural gas, that rock fractures, releasing natural gas back up the well. so if it is helping to fuel our economic recovery, why is it so

controversial? let's talk to my next two guests. abraham luftgarten won award for his series on fracking. and ann mcelhinney is producer and director of the forthcoming film "frack nation." welcome. let me ask you, simply and succinctly, what's the problem with fracking? >> well, there's serious scientific questions about what its impact is on the environment in three areas in terms of its effect on ground water deep below the surface. the wastewater that's produced and where that goes, and emissions and air pollution that results from the drilling all of which can lead to, it seems, it lead to substantial health concerns and impacts. >> so let's take the first one then. and this is basically the fear that you contaminate the water

-- drinking water reservoirs. ann, what is your research telling you about that? >> they have been fracking in the united states since 1947, so it's not a new method of any kind. and i suppose the quote from lisa jackson, the head of the epa, who was on record as saying according to her, she has no knowledge of one case of water contamination. if you have a situation -- we have a situation right now in the united states where there are millions of fracked wells across the country. this has been going on for a very, very long time. it's not something new. we've seen what happens -- nothing happens. there are no cases of water contamination. as you said yourself, fareed, it's an extraordinary ability now for america to extract this oil and gas and become energy independent. it's amazing for america. >> how do you respond to that? there has been a lot of fracking going on, hasn't there? >> there has. science just is not as certain as we've just heard.

the fracking process has been developed in various forms over the last 50 years or so, but nothing at all like it is today, not in terms of the volume, the type of chemicals, the slick water fracturing, horizontal drilling. really this is just something that's come about in the last ten years at best. and the other thing that's dramatically different from historical drilling activity is the scale in which this is happening. the thousands and thousands of wells, the speed at which they're being drilled and the range across the country. so it's entirely different from historically how drilling has happened. >> ann, what about that famous video in "gasland" where the guy opens a tab and flames shoots shoot out. the argument this is methane that has come from fracking that has entered the water supply. >> yeah. very interesting actually. because we actually challenged the director of "gasland" on that very issue. it's a dramatic moment.

you see the guy light the water and think if they frack in my area this is going to happen. what they don't tell you and we confronted them, does all water in america light, and the truth is yes, it does. and it always has. that's why you have towns all over america called burning springs because the water always lit on fire. why does the water in america light on fire? because of naturally occurring methane which there's a lot of. while that sounds like a bad thing, it's really good news because that means there's an abundance of natural gas and abundance of oil naturally occurring. you know, what happened in "gas land" was this was very dramatic, this scene. people across the world have seen it and been terrified by it. it's just not true. >> the argument is that methane mixes with water naturally or perhaps somebody drilling a water well hit a reservoir of methane. this was not necessarily a product of fracking.

>> well, i think what you're hearing is a gross generalization. i've interviewed dozens of people, both researchers and homeowners who have, you know, who have dealt with methane seepage, the pennsylvania department of environmental protection, the epa itself, by other government entities where clearly the methane released in those -- in some of those cases has been caused by drilling activity, whether fracking or drilling or cementing or some aspect of the drilling activity. so it's just not true to dismiss all of those because some methane can occur naturally in some places. >> i think the really good example is that, you know, if you think of what happened in dimock, pennsylvania, always quoted as ground zero for this. every documentarian has gone there, journalists, and they've interviewed 11 litigants. there were 11 saying that there was methane leakage into their water in dimock, pennsylvania.

11 litigants. we found something everyone seems not to have found, we found 1,500 families who said the water there was always appalling, that they always had methane in the water because of the fact the place is so rich in natural gas. they formed an organization called enough already. that's why we're making this film, because if you think about the 1%, we're making a film for the 9%. he talks about libya and what will happen, but his salutations are very weak. the method is very much in favor of this method for extracting natural gas. when america is putting itself in such danger for getting oil, in countries that really hate america. >> what about the argument that

you have to compare natural gas to the alternative. if we didn't achieve natural gas, we would be getting our energy from coal. coal is dirtier than natural gas, has higher disease-causing pollutants and it also causes lots of deaths in coal mining accidents. >> there are lots of benefits to natural gas. i don't think anyone really disputes that. i just think it's also important when you look at those benefits to keep in mind the costs. there are very serious questions and they need to be answered, and most scientific communities and government regulatory agencies looking at this agree with that. >> thank you both for being with us. this is a very good, substantive, civilized debate. up next, why this odd-looking contraption could save thousands of lives in

afghanistan and around the world.

well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. >> that morning from the foreign policy debate got me thinking and it led to our question of the week. during which war did the u.s. execute its last horse cavalry charge? was it a, the civil war, b, the spanish american war, c, world war i or d, world war ii. stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. go to cnn.com/fareed for more of the gps challenge and insight analysis. you can also follow us on twitter and facebook.

and you can get the audio podcast for free or you can buy the video version. itunes.com/fareed. to week's book is plutocrats. this book has interesting data on inequality, it has fun types on the lives of the plutocrats and fun tips on what to do about all this. now for a last look. take a look at this. from a distance it looks like a dandelion. up close perhaps an odd bunch of toilet plungers. so what is it? it's called minereform. propelled by the wind, it's to wander around land mines until it finds one. its designer is an afghan who

has vivid memories of losing toys that were thrown into land mine areas when he was growing up in the war era in the soviet union. the problem goes beyond toys. afghanistan is estimated to have at least 10 million unexploded land mines and more than 40 civilians are killed by these every month on average. this might be a home-grown way to start fixing this problem. necessity is truly the mother of invention. the correct answer to our challenge question was d. the last horse cavalry charge was in world war ii. in 1942, the horse cavalry regimen surprised the japanese in the phillipines and were victorious. you might remember horses were also used earlier in afghanistan by u.s. special forces, but that was not an official cavalry unit or official cavalry charge. thanks to all of you for being a

part of my program this week. i will see you next week. hello, everyone. you're in the cnn newsroom. i'm fredricka whitfield. "the next list" will return next sunday, november 11 after the election tuesday. we want to bring you the latest coverage of hurricane sandy. tens of millions of people along the east coast from north carolina to maine are preparing for a monster of a storm that could have a devastating impact on the entire region of the outer bands of hurricane sandy. right now pounding the carolinas. the storm is about 250 miles southeast of cape hatteras, north carolina, carrying 75-mile-an-hour winds. sandy is moving north, and it's expected to turn toward the ea